Amazon engineers in Seattle slam employer for building AI data centers while laying off 30,000 staffers

Ah, Amazon. The company that can spend $200 billion on AI data centres — a sum that could buy you every single Premier League club twice over and still have change for a small country — but apparently can't afford 30,000 employees. Engineers from the very same company had the audacity to turn up at a Seattle City Council hearing to support regulating those very data centres. Because nothing says 'I believe in my employer's vision' like showing up to testify against its unchecked expansion while your own job hangs in the balance.

The irony is so thick you could power one of those data centres with it. Amazon's $200 billion infrastructure splurge is the kind of thing you do when you've got too much money and too little shame. Meanwhile, the 30,000 laid-off staff are presumably expected to be grateful they can now apply for jobs at the AI data centres — which, coincidentally, don't employ many humans. The engineers who spoke up are the canaries in the coal mine, except the coal mine is a server farm and the canary is unionising.

So here we are: Amazon builds the machinery to automate jobs, fires the people doing the jobs, and then has the nerve to call it 'operational efficiency.' The City Council might regulate the data centres, but no one's regulating the real problem — a business model where billion-dollar AI ambitions are paid for in human terms. But hey, at least the shareholders are thrilled. They always are.